


We Need to Talk About The Evenstar

by catherineflowers



Series: We Need To Talk About ... [5]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Feels, Babyfic, F/M, Lactation Kink, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 08:56:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14870702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catherineflowers/pseuds/catherineflowers
Summary: "Jaime feels hollow. Sandblasted. Like he’s seen Brienne for the first time today, found out who she is.It all makes sense now – he is her substitute father."





	We Need to Talk About The Evenstar

**1\. Brienne**

Evie Tarth wakes them for the fifth time that night. She’s a big and hungry newborn after all. Just eight weeks old.

Brienne murmurs cursewords into her pillow but Jaime’s up and at the crib. He’s a terrible sleeper anyway – the night waking doesn’t bother him as much as it does Brienne. She feels like she’s dragging her half-functional brain through treacle just to open her eyes.

He scoops Evie up in the crook of his elbow and brings her to their bed. Brienne arranges pillows and her clothing and latches that hungry little mouth on to her breast. Evie sucks furiously, gulping like her life depends on it.

“Want some tea?” Jaime whispers.

Brienne shakes her head. She wants sleep.

Her body has never felt more like her enemy. She’s sore, bloated, stiff, constipated from the breastfeeding, and unfathomably, ridiculously, incomprehensibly tired.

“What’s the time?” she asks Jaime.

He glances at his wrist – his right wrist at first as he nearly always does, and then his left, where his watch actually sits now. “A little after four.”

“In the morning?”

“I think so.”

It has been night for almost four months now – the very heart of winter. With a newborn, it’s been the deepest of the seven hells. Disorienting. Confusing. Miserable.

Eventually, Evie falls off her breast, milk-drunk and snuffling sleepily. Jaime snuggles their baby close and picks her up, rocking her to make sure she is fully settled. Cooing at her and rubbing her back to wind her. He parts the curtains to peer out of the window, as he always does when he thinks he hears a car outside. Just in case it’s Cersei, Brienne suspects. Just in case there’s trouble. As always, there’s nothing out there but falling snow, nothing but a splash of dusty gold light from their security lights outside.

Brienne rolls over and sinks back into warm, delicious sleep.

**2\. Jaime**

The security lights caress the shape of Evie’s face - the soft curve of her brow, the plump of her cheek. The pale fluff of her hair. Her pretty mouth makes sucking motions and she sighs through her little button nose, perfect and beautiful in every way there is to be beautiful.

His daughter, Evenstar Joanna Alysanne Tarth. His Evie. He never wants to stop gazing at her – he loves these times when the whole world sleeps and it feels like he and she are the only two people in the world.

He will keep her safe. He will. Nothing will touch them here.

He looks out of the window across the lights of the city below. Here in the hills, they are far from all the disorder and commotion, far from Cersei and Robert and his father’s ghost. 

Jaime had, somewhat surprisingly, been left a significant amount of money in his father’s will. Even more surprisingly, no one had contested him on it. He and Brienne had used it to run – to buy this house high in the hills, surrounded by a huge wall, massive gates, and a vantage point where they could see anyone who approached by road. It was more a compound than a house. But for the first time, he had started to feel safe.

The gardens are beautiful too – already he can picture Evie running around in them in the sunshine, a tall, willowy girl with golden hair. He can’t wait.

It’s not going to be a long winter – by the time Evie is a toddler it should almost be spring. 

He presses a soft kiss to her little forehead, and slowly, inch by inch, lowers her into her crib. She startles a bit when her back hits the mattress, tiny arms jerking upwards, but he rubs her head, her cheek, for a few minutes and she doesn’t wake.

He tiptoes back to bed, snuggling up to Brienne’s broad back. She stirs a little and mutters, troubled.

**3\. Brienne**

Brienne sits on the balcony in her PJs in the snow. She’s smoking and she knows she shouldn’t, but she is. She can’t relax.

The smoke drifts up into the sky, utterly pitch black even though it’s 9am. The quiet is ruined by the sounds of traffic from the city far below, by the sound of their neighbour’s dog barking, by some utter fucking asshole on a motorbike who clearly never had a sleeping baby. It makes Brienne want to cry.

Brienne is struggling. She had a difficult birth and she’s not recovered physically for one thing. Her body feels strange – flabby and weak and not at all like her own. 

For another, the indignities of pregnancy and birth, all the poking and prodding and the blood and stitches triggered bad memories, long-buried. Memories she thought she could deal with, of her rape and its aftermath. She feels out of control, vulnerable and frail. 

She’s even had nightmares again, for the first time in years, nightmares that feature horrible combinations of gang rape, cervical examinations, forceps. She wakes up sweating and shivering and traumatised at least once a night.

She knows she needs to talk to Jaime, but she can’t.

She can’t. Because worst of all, worst of everything, is that often, her dreams are about her father. Jaime would want to know where that came from, and the answer, of course, is Cersei. She still hasn’t told him about Cersei, or what she told Brienne about Tywin.

Selwyn Tarth never raped his only daughter. Of course he didn’t. The thought fills Brienne with shame and horror – the fact that her subconscious is capable of summoning such images is profoundly disturbing to her.

Fuck Cersei. Brienne flicks her cigarette butt off the balcony, watches it sail down to the garden below, a flaming ember in the endless night.

Gods, she needs some sun. She needs some light. She needs something.

**4\. Jaime**

He hears Brienne come in from the balcony, hears her head for the bathroom to clean her teeth. She thinks he doesn’t know she’s smoking again, but he knows. Of course he knows.

He knows how much she’s struggling too, though she hasn’t said a word. He’s seen her fight the tears, heard her wake from nightmares, but she’s never woken him. Never come to him for an embrace the way he comes to her when he’s in hell.

He bounces Evie on his shoulder while he makes them breakfast, holding her in place with the stump of his right arm. Luckily he was already proficient at doing things one-handed. But she’s getting hungry, fussing and mouthing her fist against his neck.

Brienne comes in with a false smile on her face, her hair knotty and tucked behind her ears, the smell of smoke around her like a cloud. She takes a seat at the table and pulls the morning papers towards her.

He sets her cup of tea in front of her, then her toast. Kisses her forehead.

“She sounds hungry,” Brienne says.

“Yeah, I think so.”

She reaches for their daughter, takes her and kisses her chubby little cheek. Evie roots frantically at the touch of skin on her face, and Brienne rearranges her PJs to give her what she wants. She tucks into her toast while Evie feeds.

Jaime sits opposite them, hand wrapped around his own steaming mug of tea.

“I’ve been thinking,” Brienne says around a mouthful of toast. “I’d like to see my dad.”

“That sounds like a great idea.”

“Obviously I know he’s not going to know who I am, or who Evie is, or even know that we’re there, but …”

He nods. Smiles. He doesn’t know a lot about Brienne’s dad – almost nothing in fact. Only that he was a naval man, a man who had been given the nickname The Evenstar during his service. Brienne had named their daughter for him. 

Jaime knows too that The Evenstar has a degenerative disease, and that he’s been in a vegetative state for a long long time.

“Is he out on the island still?”

Brienne nods. “In a care facility.”

“How long has it been since you saw him?”

She flinches. Looks away. For a moment she looks murderously angry, as if he has accused her of something, but then her face softens and she looks back at him. “Eighteen years,” she says quietly.

“Okay.”

“I promised him I wouldn’t,” she says. “He didn’t want me to see him once it got too bad.”

“I understand.”

“But I’ve been – thinking about him. A lot. Since Evie.”

“That’s only natural.”

She looks at Evie, gulping away at her breast. Shifts position slightly with a wince.

**5\. Brienne**

Evie naps. Brienne and Jaime go to bed. 

The idea is to get some sleep – Brienne will have to drive to the island and she’s too tired to be considered safe right now. She needs to catch up.

Jaime watches TV while she dozes on his naked chest, stroking his chest hair, fingers wandering, circling, tracing his nipples. Listening to his heartbeat. Wrapped in his arms like he’s her comfort blanket.

He’s hard under the duvet although he shifts his legs to try to hide it. It’s sweet of him – he clearly doesn’t want to put her under any pressure after what her body’s been through. Sweet that he thinks just having an erection is pressure.

She lets her wandering fingers wander lower, skate beneath the covers. He gasps as she delves into the warmth of his underpants, pulls them down around his thighs and wraps her hand around his shaft.

“You don’t have to,” he whispers.

“Shhhh,” she whispers back.

He closes his eyes with the gentlest sigh – draws her close to kiss her hair as she strokes him. She listens to his breathing, speeding up, hitching in his chest, starting to shudder. His hips roll against the motions of her hand – his face is a picture of concentration and anticipation. He shoves the blankets away with the stump of his right hand, grasps her hip with his left, hard. 

He turns towards her so they lie on their sides facing each other and she curls her leg around his, stroking the inside of his calf with her toes. He’s panting hard, his mouth pressed to her forehead, his hot breath blowing her hair into her eyes as he fucks her palm.

“Don’t stop,” he gasps. “Gods. Please. Don’t stop.”

Unbidden, Cersei comes into her head. Cersei’s story, of the first time she gave Jaime a handjob and made him spill his load on her Girl Scout uniform. He had begged her not to stop then too, apparently. Just as he begs Brienne now. 

Fuck Cersei. Fuck how her poison is in everything Brienne ever fucking thinks about.

Jaime’s helpless thrusts speed up, skin golden and rich in the soft bedside lamplight, muscles tense, then fluid, then tense again. Brienne watches his toes curl, his legs flex and strain even as she speeds up the movements of her hand.

He comes with a choked cry stifled against the flesh of her cheek - his seed pours hot and copious over her hand and arm and thigh. His mouth presses hot kisses to her mouth, her cheek, her neck. He pulses and jerks in her hand.

“Love you,” he says through a thick throat when he has done. “Love you.” 

She cleans up with baby wipes. His left hand skates over her hip, across her thigh. His eyes lush and lusty, but restrained. Concerned.

Brienne shakes her head. “Not yet,” she whispers.

He nods. Moves his hand to the small of her back and just holds her. Kisses her. “Still sore?” he asks.

She smiles. In truth, she’s much better. The strange, dislocated hip pain she had, the internal bruising, even the raw soreness of all those stitches, has faded. The bleeding stopped two weeks ago. But she can’t contemplate being touched yet, not even with fingers, not even with his tongue. Even wiping after the toilet, even putting panties on, sometimes brings back the tearing agony of those forceps, the sound of her own screams. 

And behind that, all those horrible memories she thought were years in her past - being pinned down in that piss-soaked bathroom, drugged up and fucked up and beaten up. Four guys who thought that just because she was tall, just because she was big, that somehow she was challenging them just by being out and enjoying herself, enjoying her freedom, enjoying being seventeen. Four guys who thought they’d show her she was no challenge to them whatsoever. The tearing agony of them taking her virginity, the sound of her own screams.

And even deeper, there’s Tywin. His cold hard eyes. And her father, often him as well. Taking her, destroying her. Destroying her and Jaime.

Fuck Cersei. This is all her fucking fault.

**6\. Jaime**

Brienne drives them through the blinding blizzard calmly, leaning back in her seat and singing along to the radio.

Jaime sits in the back with Evie in her car seat, waving rattles and toys whenever she makes a noise, singing and smiling at her. It’s not a long journey to the island, but it’s the furthest Evie’s ever been. She’s not used to car journeys, and she doesn’t seem to be one of those babies who is lulled by engine sounds.

She seems fascinated by the passing streetlights out the windows, by the trails of headlamps, the streaming snowflakes. She’s a curious thing.

With her eyes wide open, he can see how much she looks like Brienne. The same soft chin, the same rounded cheeks and gentle eyes. She’s enormous too, long and big and had been almost 11lbs at birth. She’s going to be a giant like her mother.

He can’t articulate how happy he is that she looks like Brienne. He had agonised over the feelings he would have, looking at her face and seeing Cersei, seeing his other children. He would have loved her nonetheless, of course, but he didn’t want her to be a Lannister. Thank the Gods the Tarth genes are so strong.

**7\. Brienne**

They arrive on the island just before lunchtime. They sit in the car eating drive-through cheeseburgers while Brienne feeds Evie. An onion falls out of her burger and onto Evie’s head, and Jaime almost chokes himself laughing.

“We won’t stay long,” she promises.

“Stay as long as you want,” he says, his brow creased. “There’s no time limit. We could get a motel or something if it gets too late.”

She shakes her head. A visit isn’t the point, there’s nothing to do there. No one to talk to, no one to interact with. No one to show Evie to. She’s going because she needs to see her father’s face, to remember him how he really is, to cleanse the nightmares from her brain.

**8\. Jaime**

In the parking lot of the nursing facility where Selwyn Tarth has spent the last eighteen years of his life, Brienne pulls in and parks, badly. Curses and pulls out of the space and in again, equally crooked. She gets out of the truck, finds the diaper bag and checks it for the umpteenth time. Dresses Evie in her little jacket.

Jaime drapes the baby carrier over his shoulders, and Brienne helps him tie the knots while he holds Evie in place on his chest. He notices her hands are shaking as she pulls them tight. 

Evie snuffles and roots a little, but she’s fed and sleepy and he knows she will be out for the count as soon as she hears his heartbeat. She sighs happily, surrounded by her daddy’s scent. He loves her. He loves her so so much.

The care facility looks like a friendly place, if spartan and functional. But Brienne gazes, terrified, at the bars on the windows, the peeling paint on the doorframes, the bored-looking nurses on a cigarette break. Once inside, the receptionist smiles at them warmly though, and gushes over Evie as she buzzes Selwyn’s nurse.

They wait in a tiny waiting room, Jaime sitting on the PVC couch, kissing Evie’s warm little head. Brienne hops from foot to foot like she’s in desperate need of a toilet.

A short young man who barely comes up to Brienne’s chest comes down the corridor with a wide smile on his wide face, holds out a stubby hand for Brienne to shake, then Jaime. Jaime notes with amusement that he is called Nurse Payne. He fumbles with his words a bit, accidentally calling Brienne “Ser” but he’s happy to lead them to her father’s room.

The corridors are well lit and clean, but they need a repaint and smell strongly of bleach. Jaime knows Brienne hates the smell of bleach - it reminds her of public toilets like the one where she was raped. It fucks with her head the way the smell of oil and sawdust fucks with his. This won’t help. He grabs her hand and holds it hard. 

“You okay?” he whispers.

She nods once, her mouth a tight line.

“I can wait outside? You take Evie?”

“No.”

And then they are there. Nurse Payne opens the plain brown door with another smile. Grey carpet, a little worn. A wide bed, neatly made. A wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a bedside cabinet, in laminated wood. Brienne trembles by Jaime’s side. 

Two armchairs and a coffee table.

By the table, in a wheelchair, sits The Evenstar. Dressed in clean clothes, a pair of slacks and a shirt, worn and at least a decade out of date. A sweater vest for warmth. He’s slumped over, head supported by cushions, eyes open and vacant, mouth open. A thin runner of drool drips onto his chest.

Brienne lets go of Jaime’s hand and flees the room.

**9\. Brienne**

She stops running in the central courtyard – an atrium of sorts. Weedy plants in pots covered with snow. A rusty metal bench. Above her the sky is huge and black, and it feels like it’s lunging at her - the black mouth of a beast about to devour her.

She wants to cry. Scream. Throw up. This was a mistake, a stupid thing to do. A horror and a terror. She settles for a cigarette, lighting it with shaking hands and sucking it almost halfway down on her first drag.

“You okay?” Jaime. Behind her. She makes a frantic effort to hide the cigarette behind her back, but he raises an eyebrow that tells her he’s not an idiot.

“Not really. This was a mistake.”

“Want to go home?”

She shakes her head. Takes another drag on her cigarette. “I feel like I’m breaking a sacred vow or something.”

“Because he didn’t want you to see him?”

She nods. “It was his whole plan. For so many years. As soon as he found out, I think.”

“How old were you?” 

“Eight, when he was diagnosed. Ten when he told me. Eleven when I had to start taking care of him.”

“You took care of him?”

“Until I was sixteen. Then he booked himself into here, sold our house to pay for it. Gave me a little bit of money and told me never to come back. Ever. He made me promise.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She shrugs. “I felt guilty. A bit ashamed, maybe?”

“Why?”

She shrugs again. Not sure she can articulate it. “I didn’t fight him hard enough. I should have. I should have stayed with him.”

“He looks well cared for here.”

She sighs. “I was glad. Isn’t that awful? I was sixteen, I’d had to give up school, I’d spent my teenage years sorting his meds and washing his clothes and cleaning up his shit and I was so fucking glad to get out of there. I just wanted to run for the city and start my life.”

“Of course you did. Brienne – what you did for him –“

“I was really stupid. I thought it was going to be so exciting and glamorous and fun. I thought I’d get a great job, have great nights out, meet a great guy. Instead I get myself attacked within six months and everything just changed.”

“Brienne …”

“I couldn’t come back then. Not broken and fucked up as I was. He would have still known who I was then, I couldn’t let him see his sacrifice was all for nothing.”

**10\. Jaime**

He takes her in his arms, cradling her against Evie’s sleeping form in the carrier. She sobs against his shoulder and he feels the weariness in her, the years of exhaustion.

Jaime feels hollow. Sandblasted. Like he’s seen Brienne for the first time today, found out who she is. 

It all makes sense now – he is her substitute father. 

She has carried this with her all of these years, he realises. It must have been hell. All of this guilt, all of these recriminations – believing she abandoned her father. 

After she was raped, Brienne had lived her life in a frozen bubble – in the same job, in the same tiny apartment, infatuated with Renly because it was safe. Until she met Jaime. He had thought at the time that it had been liberating for her, finding freedom, finding love, finding sex.

Brienne had thrown herself wholeheartedly at him because it was the only way she knew how to live her life, he realises now. He was someone to love, yes, but someone to care for as well, someone with long-lasting issues who needed her to be strong, stalwart, present. Someone older than her, just like her father. Someone disabled, physically, mentally.

He hates that, but he loves her for it too. How can he not?

“Why don’t we get a motel room?” he whispers into her hair. “Come back tomorrow and try this again.”

She nods, and sobs again.

**11\. Brienne**

When Jaime said motel room, he did, of course, mean a four star hotel. The posh one on the beachfront where she had sometimes chambermaided for extra cash at weekends in her youth.

He pays for a suite in cash, plus a deposit for a travel cot, then goes out with Evie to buy some clothes for tomorrow and some extra diapers.

Brienne has a shower. Sobs her heart out in the running water, a full-on painful, snotty cry. Dries herself in a big white fluffy hotel towel and falls into the big white soft hotel bed and falls asleep.

She wakes up to Evie crying. Lustily, hungrily. 

“Sorry,” says Jaime. “I was trying to let you sleep, but she’s hungry.”

Brienne unwraps the towel and latches Evie on, curled around her tiny form on the massive king-size bed. Jaime unpacks the clothes he bought, hangs them in the wardrobe. Makes up the travel cot, hanging some new toys across it. A little mobile with some little jungle animals. A wrist rattle. Something she can chew.

Brienne catches Jaime looking at her, at her body where the towel is open. His eyes linger on her thighs, his lips parted, his eyes dark. He looks away when he sees her looking back, goes back to folding baby blankets.

Evie finishes her feed, and Brienne puts her in the travel cot to kick and play with her new toys. She turns the TV on, tunes it to some mindless children’s rubbish – bright colours, repetitive songs. Even so young, Evie lies there mesmerised.

Brienne turns off the lights, one at a time, so there’s only the TV screen to light the room. She turns to Jaime and drops her towel.

**12\. Jaime**

Jaime goes to Brienne on his knees. Eyes on her eyes because he is frightened to look at her body, frightened of what it means to show that he wants her. Oh Gods he wants her.

He reaches out with his hand, but doesn’t want to touch her. Opens his mouth but doesn’t know what to say.

The bright colours of Evie’s TV show dance in Brienne’s serious eyes and on the wet sheen of her lips. He sees that she wants him too, that she needs him desperately. But she doesn’t need Jaime right now, she needs Brienne. She needs him to be Brienne.

He stands up, taking his t-shirt off over his head, showing her the shape of him, the strength. Holding her eyes, firm and true, the way she does for him when he’s not strong. He moves closer, and then closer still, not touching her, but letting her feel the warmth of his body on her naked skin and pleased when he sees her arms break into gooseflesh at his nearness. 

He grazes his lips against her collarbone - not exactly a kiss, but an inhalation of her taste. She mutters something incoherent that might be his name, might be a protest, might be an encouragement. He sighs hot breath against her neck. Drags the merest tip of his tongue up the tendon in her neck, over the swell of her throat, the pulsebeat of her vein. He follows the line of her jawbone with his lips until he finds its very corner, right beneath her ear, and blesses it with the softest kiss he knows how to bestow.

Gentleness. Tenderness. This is what Brienne has given to him. Him, the darkest deviant, the most battered, fucked up man. She has shown him that every part of him is worth loving, every part of him has life. He wants to give that back to her.

**13\. Brienne**

She’s overcome with the need to say his name – she whispers it, moans it, calls it to the ceiling as he kisses his way down her body, the merest brush of lips and breath and beard against her skin.

Her skin … it’s never felt more awake, more alive. More his. She thinks he’s headed down between her legs but he seems preoccupied with the fade of stretch marks on the sides of her belly. They span her sides, hips to ribs, criss-crossing each other like flames, slightly raised, slightly uneven. He splays the fingers of his left hand across them, his touch shadow-soft, snowflake light. 

His fingertips brush the underside of her breast in his explorations and strangely, incongruously, she feels the heavy pull of her let-down reflex. Milk beads on both her nipples, white and gleaming in the half light. He looks at her with something akin to wonder, his mouth open and his green eyes wide.

She reaches for the towel, puddled at her feet, but he stops her. Looks her in the eyes while he swirls his tongue around the soft pink peaks, one at a time, lapping the drops of milk away. 

Her nipples are hard, and they make him smirk, his eyes half-lidded and dreamy with passion in the half-light. He nuzzles against one with his open mouth and then suckles at it, drawing her milk out with a deep hard suck. He hums in delight at the flavour and moves to the other nipple, droplets glistening in his beard.

Brienne groans as his mouth latches on again, hard as hell, his moustache tickling the top of her breast. The nipple he has abandoned, left in the lurch, leaks blindly, dripping sweet, sticky milk onto his shoulder and down his chest. How can she be so turned on by this? She doesn’t know, but her hips heave against him with a mind of their own and her thighs are suddenly soaked.

**14\. Jaime**

Her fingers dig into his neck, his shoulder, his spine. She’s groaning his name and she smells like sex but she tastes like Evie - the milk, the baby-soft skin. Her hips roll against him, the hair between her legs grazing his chest, damp and hot.

He lets her nipple pop out of his mouth to watch the milk drip from it, letting it run down the swell of her breast and down her ribs and into his open, waiting mouth. He trails the lines it has made with his tongue, savouring the sweetness of it on his lips and beard.

He sits back on his legs to watch both breasts drip repeatedly, the milk forming sticky rivulets down her hips and into the hair of her sex. After a moment, he follows its path eagerly downward, lapping like a starving man until the flavour mixes and mingles with that of her cunt and then he’s lost. He pulls his mouth away and gazes up at her in the dark from in front of her sex. 

He wants to ask her permission, to promise he’ll be gentle, to swear he’ll never hurt her, but he thinks she knows. He puts his hand on the still-soft mound of her belly and she puts her hand on top and squeezes.

**15\. Brienne**

She’s pretty sure they can hear her in the next room. Probably on the floor below, too. Possibly in the street outside.

She can see herself in the mirrored wardrobe at the foot of the bed – and she can see him too. He’s beautiful, kneeling on the floor next to the bed while she lays flat-out on her back. The muscles in his back arched and powerful like a predator about to strike, his hair golden and gleaming, his head buried between the bright white of her thighs. 

She looks huge, almost monstrous, flushed and wailing. Louder, louder – she can’t shut up. His mouth is too much but she can’t escape it – she’s pulled the sheet half off the bed with her flailing legs, her grasping hands.

**16\. Jaime**

He comes up from her cunt gasping for air – she’s drowning him, smothering him. But Gods -he loves the gleam of sweat on her forehead, the grimace on her face, the long arch of her long neck when her head goes back as she comes for the dozenth time.

Even in the near dark, he can see the line of raised flesh on her perineum where they cut her, where she tore. She shudders a little when he licks it, but squirms closer to his face for more. He places a sweet, baby-soft kiss right there, and another one for Evie, like a thank you.

**17\. Brienne**

“Try,” she pants. “Please – inside me.”

Jaime lifts his head from between her legs, his face wet from ear to ear. He nods and stands up, fumbling with his pants with his clumsy left hand. Then his cock jumps out of his fly, eager as an excited puppy. Brienne can’t help but smile.

She shuffles up the bed to make room for him as he steps out of his trousers. How could she ever have worried about this? It’s Jaime – her Jaime, the only man she’s ever felt safe with, the only man she’s ever wanted to keep safe.

He clambers up between her legs, cock in his hand, his hair falling into his eyes. How does he look so good? He looks wicked and lascivious and gentle and caring all in one. He slides slowly into place over her body - she feels him hard against her, right against her, ready. Waiting.

“If – if it hurts, just tell me. I’ll stop.”

She nods. He slips his hand between their bodies to guide himself. His cock nuzzles her, pushing and then retreating, Pushing again. The head slides inside her, warm and soft and hard all at once. Jaime shivers. Lets out a little grunt.

Just then, Evie starts to cry in the travel cot – bored or hungry or tired? They both freeze.

“Seriously?” Jaime complains. “Now?”

**18\. Jaime**

It’s midnight and Evie is still wide awake, her eyes gazing at up at him – perfect, astonishing -just like Brienne’s. They sit together on the suite’s sofa, Jaime watching 24-hour news while Evie waves and mouths at her wrist rattle. 

Brienne is asleep, long limbs splayed right across the hotel bed, head buried in a mound of pillows. She looks peaceful, he thinks. More peaceful than she has in a long time.

The news cycle switches over to weather, he watches it lazily. Happily. Smiling at his daughter. 

Far in the south, the Summer Isles had an hour of daylight today.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone who has stuck with this series, I really hope you enjoyed this part.
> 
> There will be more to come!


End file.
